


Butting Heads

by SamIAm



Series: Always This [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Animagus, Animal Traits, Consensual Violence, Dominance Fighting, Female Friendship, Gen, MWPP Era, Marauders, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Pack Dynamics, Play Fighting, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:17:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamIAm/pseuds/SamIAm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Although we intuitively realize when companion animals and children are playing, it is sometimes difficult, even among children, to distinguish play-fighting from aggression (Dolhinow 1999; Smith et al 2004; Pellis and Pellis 2009)." -Kerrie Graham and Gordon Burghart, Current Perspectives on the Biological Study of Play: Signs of Progress</p><p>---</p><p>Petra frets over some unforeseen effects of the animagus transformation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butting Heads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grassangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassangel/gifts).



> With thanks to Grassangel for the title.

By fourth year Petra doesn’t know what to do about the fighting.

It’s constant and it’s wild and it’s _physical._ Sirius and James can’t turn around without getting into shoving matches, and Remus keeps ending up flat on her back, hands above her head in open-palmed supplication.

They think it's great, all in good fun. They don't see any problems with constant aggression, with bumps and bruises and the departure from dignity.

Friends shouldn't be fighting at all but what really gets to Petra is how barbaric it is. This is not how witches fight.

Despite the apparent magical cause it’s so very muggle: petty, inelegant and inefficient. Like muggles it should be trivial and instead it's escalating, would be dismissible except for how James ended up in the Hospital Wing when she upset an ink bottle all over Remus’ homework and Remus _snarled_ and sprang up and _pounced._

And James bowed her head: James, who has never known how to back down and has never wanted to learn to surrender, lowered her head and _met_ her as if James had another hundred kilos of muscle to back it up.

But there were no horns to catch the attack on and human necks aren’t meant to work that way.

James screamed and crumpled and Petra froze.

Petra froze but Remus grabbed her wand and hit James with a Full Body-binding and shrieked for Sirius to move James, and then they were racing for the Hospital Wing and Petra was following, something in her thrilled be moving thrilled to be leaving the place she had been so afraid, but her thoughts were like slowly melting ice and she couldn’t figure out what to do, this wasn't a spell gone sour, this wasn't anything she'd ever prepared for and-

And Madam Pomfrey fixed stupid James’ stupid neck with two spells without even asking what had happened, without even acting like there was any problem because of course she did. Because it was just a stupid muggle accident, because Petra’s friends are just turning into animals and starting to fight like them, starting think like them instead of like witches since they won't evaluate what they're doing and _stop._

Petra hasn’t managed the full transformation yet.

Petra’s not sure that she ever wants to.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr, revised for posting to AO3.


End file.
